‘Astro what?’
‘Astrobiology—the study of living organisms in space. The Russians really started it when they sent up the dog Laika in Sputnik II and they’re still ahead of us in this field. But no one’s done any serious work on insects or invertebrates—in fact, on any animals except dogs, mice, and monkeys.’
‘I see. Would I be correct in saying that you would like funds for building a zoo in space?’
The laughter in the committee room had helped to kill the project. And it had helped, Senator Steelman now realised, to kill him.
He had only himself to blame, for Dr Harkness had tried, in his ineffectual way, to outline the benefits that a space laboratory might bring. He had particularly stressed the medical aspects, promising nothing but pointing out the possibilities. Surgeons, he had suggested, would be able to develop new techniques in an environment where the organs had no weight; men might live longer, freed from the wear and tear of gravity, for the strain on heart and muscles would be enormously reduced. Yes, he had mentioned the heart; but that had been of no interest to Senator Steelman—healthy, and ambitious, and anxious to make good copy…
‘Why have you come to tell me this?’ he said dully. ‘Couldn’t you let me die in peace?’
‘That’s the point,’ said Harkness impatiently. ‘There’s no need to give up hope.’
‘Because the Russians have cured some hamsters and rabbits?’
‘They’ve done much more than that. The paper I showed you only quoted the preliminary results; it’s already a year out of date. They don’t want to raise false hopes, so they are keeping as quiet as possible.’
‘How do you know this?’
Harkness looked surprised.
‘Why, I called Professor Stanyukovitch, my opposite number. It turned out that he was up on the Mechnikov Station, which proves how important they consider this work. He’s an old friend of mine, and I took the liberty of mentioning your case.’
The dawn of hope, after its long absence, can be as painful as its departure. Steelman found it hard to breathe and for a dreadful moment he wondered if the final attack had come. But it was only excitement; the constriction in his chest relaxed, the ringing in his ears faded away, and he heard Dr Harkness’s voice saying: ‘He wanted to know if you could come to Astrograd right away, so I said I’d ask you. If you can make it, there’s a flight from New York at ten-thirty tomorrow morning.’
Tomorrow he had promised to take the children to the Zoo; it would be the first time he had let them down. The thought gave him a sharp stab of guilt, and it required almost an effort of will to answer: ‘I can make it.’
He saw nothing of Moscow during the few minutes that the big intercontinental ramjet fell down from the stratosphere. The view-screens were switched off during the descent, for the sight of the ground coming straight up as a ship fell vertically on its sustaining jets was highly disconcerting to passengers.
At Moscow he changed to a comfortable but old-fashioned turboprop, and as he flew eastward into the night he had his first real opportunity for reflection. It was a very strange question to ask himself, but was he altogether glad that the future was no longer wholly certain? His life, which a few hours ago had seemed so simple, had suddenly become complex again, as it opened out once more into possibilities he had learned to put aside. Dr Johnson had been right when he said that nothing settles a man’s mind more wonderfully than the knowledge that he will be hanged in the morning. For the converse was certainly true—nothing unsettled it so much as the thought of a reprieve.
He was asleep when they touched down at Astrograd, the space capital of the USSR. When the gentle impact of the landing shook him awake, for a moment he could not imagine where he was. Had he dreamed that he was flying halfway around the world in search of life? No; it was not a dream, but it might well be a wild-goose chase.
Twelve hours later, he was still waiting for the answer. The last instrument reading had been taken; the spots of light on the cardiograph display had ceased their fateful dance. The familiar routine of the medical examination and the gentle, competent voices of the doctors and nurses had done much to relax his mind. And it was very restful in the softly lit reception room, where the specialists had asked him to wait while they conferred together. Only the Russian magazines, and a few portraits of somewhat hirsute pioneers of Soviet medicine, reminded him that he was no longer in his own country.
He was not the only patient. About a dozen men and women, of all ages, were sitting around the wall, reading magazines and trying to appear at ease. There was no conversation, no attempt to catch anyone’s eye. Every soul in this room was in his private limbo, suspended between life and death. Though they were linked together by a common misfortune, the link did not extend to communication. Each seemed as cut off from the rest of the human race as if he was already speeding through the cosmic gulfs where lay his only hope.
But in the far corner of the room, there was an exception. A young couple—neither could have been more than twenty-five—were huddling together in such desperate misery that at first Steelman found the spectacle annoying. No matter how bad their own problems, he told himself severely, people should be more considerate. They should hide their emotions—especially in a place like this, where they might upset others.
His annoyance quickly turned to pity, for no heart can remain untouched for long at the sight of simple, unselfish love in deep distress. As the minutes dripped away in a silence broken only by the rustling of papers and the scraping of chairs, his pity grew almost to an obsession.
What was their story, he wondered? The boy had sensitive, intelligent features; he might have been an artist, a scientist, a musician—there was no way of telling. The girl was pregnant; she had one of those homely peasant faces so common among Russian women. She was far from beautiful, but sorrow and love had given her features a luminous sweetness. Steelman found it hard to take his eyes from her—for somehow, though there was not the slightest physical resemblance, she reminded him of Diana. Thirty years ago, as they had walked from the church together, he had seen that same glow in the eyes of his wife. He had almost forgotten it; was the fault his, or hers, that it had faded so soon?
Without any warning, his chair vibrated beneath him. A swift, sudden tremor had swept through the building, as if a giant hammer had smashed against the ground, many miles away. An earthquake? Steelman wondered; then he remembered where he was, and started counting seconds.
He gave up when he reached sixty; presumably the soundproofing was so good that the slower, air-borne noise had not reached him, and only the shock wave through the ground recorded the fact that a thousand tons had just leapt into the sky. Another minute passed before he heard, distant but clear, a sound as of a thunderstorm raging below the edge of the world. It was even more miles away than he had dreamed; what the noise must be like at the launching site was beyond imagination.
Yet that thunder would not trouble him, he knew, when he also rose into the sky; the speeding rocket would leave it far behind. Nor would the thrust of acceleration be able to touch his body, as it rested in its bath of warm water—more comfortable even than this deeply padded chair.
That distant rumble was still rolling back from the edge of space when the door of the waiting room opened and the nurse beckoned to him. Though he felt many eyes following him, he did not look back as he walked out to receive his sentence.
The news services tried to get in contact with him all the way back from Moscow, but he refused to accept the calls. ‘Say I’m sleeping and mustn’t be disturbed,’ he told the stewardess. He wondered who had tipped them off, and felt annoyed at this invasion of his privacy. Yet privacy was something he had avoided for years, and had learned to appreciate only in the last few weeks. He could not blame the reporters and commentators if they assumed that he had reverted to type.
They were waiting for him when the ramjet touched down at Washington. He knew most of them by name, and some were old friends, gen
uinely glad to hear the news that had raced ahead of him.
‘What does it feel like, Senator,’ said Macauley, of the Times, ‘to know you’re back in harness? I take it that it’s true—the Russians can cure you?’
‘They think they can,’ he answered cautiously. ‘This is a new field of medicine, and no one can promise anything.’
‘When do you leave for space?’
‘Within the week, as soon as I’ve settled some affairs here.’
‘And when will you be back—if it works?’
‘That’s hard to say. Even if everything goes smoothly, I’ll be up there at least six months.’
Involuntarily, he glanced at the sky. At dawn or sunset—even during the daytime, if one knew where to look—the Mechnikov Station was a spectacular sight, more brilliant than any of the stars. But there were now so many satellites of which this was true that only an expert could tell one from another.
‘Six months,’ said a newsman thoughtfully. ‘That means you’ll be out of the picture for seventy-six.’
‘But nicely in it for 1980,’ said another.
‘And 1984,’ added a third. There was a general laugh; people were already making jokes about 1984, which had once seemed so far in the future, but would soon be a date no different from any other… it was hoped.
The ears and the microphones were waiting for his reply. As he stood at the foot of the ramp, once more the focus of attention and curiosity, he felt the old excitement stirring in his veins. What a comeback it would be, to return from space a new man! It would give him a glamour that no other candidate could match; there was something Olympian, almost godlike, about the prospect. Already he found himself trying to work it into his election slogans…
‘Give me time to make my plans,’ he said. ‘It’s going to take me a while to get used to this. But I promise you a statement before I leave Earth.’
Before I leave Earth. Now, there was a fine, dramatic phrase. He was still savouring its rhythm with his mind when he saw Diana coming toward him from the airport buildings.
Already she had changed, as he himself was changing; in her eyes was a wariness and reserve that had not been there two days ago. It said, as clearly as any words: ‘Is it going to happen, all over again?’ Though the day was warm, he felt suddenly cold, as if he had caught a chill on those far Siberian plains.
But Joey and Susan were unchanged, as they ran to greet him. He caught them up in his arms, and buried his face in their hair, so that the cameras would not see the tears that had started from his eyes. As they clung to him in the innocent, unselfconscious love of childhood, he knew what his choice would have to be.
They alone had known him when he was free from the itch for power; that was the way they must remember him, if they remembered him at all.
‘Your conference call, Mr Steelman,’ said his secretary. ‘I’m routing it on to your private screen.’
He swivelled round in his chair and faced the grey panel on the wall. As he did so, it split into two vertical sections. On the right half was a view of an office much like his own, and only a few miles away. But on the left—
Professor Stanyukovitch, lightly dressed in shorts and singlet, was floating in mid-air a good foot above his seat. He grabbed it when he saw that he had company, pulled himself down, and fastened a webbed belt around his waist. Behind him were ranged banks of communications equipment; and behind those, Steelman knew, was space.
Dr Harkness spoke first, from the right-hand screen.
‘We were expecting to hear from you, Senator. Professor Stanyukovitch tells me that everything is ready.’
‘The next supply ship,’ said the Russian, ‘comes up in two days. It will be taking me back to Earth, but I hope to see you before I leave the station.’
His voice was curiously high-pitched, owing to the thin oxyhelium atmosphere he was breathing. Apart from that, there was no sense of distance, no background of interference. Though Stanyukovitch was thousands of miles away, and racing through space at four miles a second, he might have been in the same office. Steelman could even hear the faint whirring of electric motors from the equipment racks behind him.
‘Professor,’ answered Steelman, ‘there are a few things I’d like to ask before I go.’
‘Certainly.’
Now he could tell that Stanyukovitch was a long way off. There was an appreciable time lag before his reply arrived; the station must be above the far side of the Earth.
‘When I was at Astrograd, I noticed many other patients at the clinic. I was wondering—on what basis do you select those for treatment?’
This time the pause was much greater than the delay due to the sluggish speed of radio waves. Then Stanyukovitch answered: ‘Why, those with the best chance of responding.’
‘But your accommodation must be very limited. You must have many other candidates besides myself.’
‘I don’t quite see the point—’ interrupted Dr Harkness, a little too anxiously.
Steelman swung his eyes to the right-hand screen. It was quite difficult to recognise, in the man staring back at him, the witness who had squirmed beneath his needling only a few years ago. That experience had tempered Harkness, had given him his baptism in the art of Politics. Steelman had taught him much, and he had applied his hard-won knowledge.
His motives had been obvious from the first. Harkness would have been less than human if he did not relish this sweetest of revenges, this triumphant vindication of his faith. And as Space Administration Director, he was well aware that half his budget battles would be over when all the world knew that a potential President of the United States was in a Russian space hospital… because his own country did not possess one.
‘Dr Harkness,’ said Steelman gently, ‘this is my affair. I’m still waiting for your answer, Professor.’
Despite the issues involved, he was quite enjoying this. The two scientists, of course, were playing for identical stakes. Stanyukovitch had his problems too; Steelman could guess the discussions that had taken place at Astrograd and Moscow, and the eagerness with which the Soviet astronauts had grasped this opportunity—which, it must be admitted, they had richly earned.
It was an ironic situation, unimaginable only a dozen years before. Here were NASA and the USSR Commission of Astronautics working hand in hand, using him as a pawn for their mutual advantage. He did not resent this, for in their place he would have done the same. But he had no wish to be a pawn; he was an individual who still had some control of his own destiny.
‘It’s quite true,’ said Stanyukovitch, very reluctantly, ‘that we can only take a limited number of patients here in Mechnikov. In any case, the station’s a research laboratory, not a hospital.’
‘How many?’ asked Steelman relentlessly.
‘Well—fewer than ten,’ admitted Stanyukovitch, still more unwillingly.
It was an old problem, of course, though he had never imagined that it would apply to him. From the depths of memory there flashed a newspaper item he had come across long ago. When penicillin had been first discovered, it was so rare that if both Churchill and Roosevelt had been dying for lack of it, only one could have been treated…
Fewer than ten. He had seen a dozen waiting at Astrograd, and how many were there in the whole world? Once again, as it had done so often in the last few days, the memory of those desolate lovers in the reception room came back to haunt him. Perhaps they were beyond his aid; he would never know.
But one thing he did know. He bore a responsibility that he could not escape. It was true that no man could foresee the future, and the endless consequences of his actions. Yet if it had not been for him, by this time his own country might have had a space hospital circling beyond the atmosphere. How many American lives were upon his conscience? Could he accept the help he had denied to others? Once he might have done so—but not now.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I can speak frankly with you both, for I know your interests are identical.’ (His mild irony,
he saw, did not escape them.) ‘I appreciate your help and the trouble you have taken; I am sorry it has been wasted. No—don’t protest; this isn’t a sudden, quixotic decision on my part. If I was ten years younger, it might be different. Now I feel that this opportunity should be given to someone else—especially in view of my record.’ He glanced at Dr Harkness, who gave an embarrassed smile. ‘I also have other, personal reasons, and there’s no chance that I will change my mind. Please don’t think me rude or ungrateful, but I don’t wish to discuss the matter any further. Thank you again, and goodbye.’
He broke the circuit; and as the image of the two astonished scientists faded, peace came flooding back into his soul.
Imperceptibly, spring merged into summer. The eagerly awaited Bicentenary celebrations came and went; for the first time in years, he was able to enjoy Independence Day as a private citizen. Now he could sit back and watch the others perform—or he could ignore them if he wished.
Because the ties of a lifetime were too strong to break, and it would be his last opportunity to see many old friends, he spent hours looking in on both conventions and listening to the commentators. Now that he saw the whole world beneath the light of Eternity, his emotions were no longer involved; he understood the issues, and appreciated the arguments, but already he was as detached as an observer from another planet. The tiny, shouting figures on the screen were amusing marionettes, acting out roles in a play that was entertaining, but no longer important—at least, to him.
But it was important to his grandchildren, who would one day move out onto this same stage. He had not forgotten that; they were his share of the future, whatever strange form it might take. And to understand the future, it was necessary to know the past.